


Sometimes A Settee...

by Crowgirl



Series: Welcoming Silences [24]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Non-Chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:03:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5226218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘I’ll tell him what’s true. I’m planning to let out the two front rooms and it’s ridiculous to let a sitting room with nothing to sit on.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes A Settee...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kivrin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin/gifts).



‘What are you going to tell Andrew?’

Foyle doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he stands back from the new settee and dusts his hands together slowly, studying the new piece of furniture critically. Then he leans forward, bracing one foot, and shoves the end nearest him back by a few inches. He stands back again and eyes it, then nods. ‘About bringing a new piece of furniture into my own house?’

Paul raises his eyebrows. ‘Really.’

Foyle has the grace to blush slightly and Paul quashes the urge to reach out and touch him -- then remembers that here, in this house, he can. He puts out a hand and brushes his knuckles against Foyle’s cheek. Foyle starts and looks over at him and Paul can see a similar train of thought pass behind Foyle’s eyes. Then Foyle shakes his head slightly and smiles, leaning his head to press his cheek lightly against Paul’s hand.

The decision, the _confidence_ expressed in Foyle’s gestures, never fails to light up both anxiety and warmth in Paul’s chest. He’s not quite ready to call the tangle of feelings “love” out loud yet even if that's what he says to himself.

‘Assuming he asks,’ Foyle says, a little tartly, ‘I’ll tell him what’s true. I’m planning to let out the two front rooms and it’s ridiculous to let a sitting room with nothing to sit on.’ He gestures to the displaced armchair sitting beside the door, waiting to be taken upstairs.

Paul eyes the settee. ‘And when the lodger is me?’

Foyle looks at him archly, head tilted on one side. ‘Have you been peeking into my applications folder?’

The folder’s a joke -- an empty manila one on Foyle’s desk at work with **Lodger** scrawled on the tab. 

Paul affects offense. ‘Oh, well, then, I shouldn’t hold you up if you’ve got big plans for the evening -- probably interviewing your new _lodger--’_

Foyle sighs in a way that’s as good as a laugh and tugs at Paul’s elbow, pulling him down on the settee. Paul is a little off his balance and ends up tight against Foyle’s side but Foyle settles back as though this is exactly what he had in mind. 

Once again, it takes Paul a moment or two to remember that this is all right, this is something he’s allowed to want and to have. That Foyle isn’t going to pull away and leave him stranded any more than anyone else is going to be the imaginary lodger.

It still feels a little odd to have a man’s straighter lines and greater bulk next to him, but Paul is also beginning to recognize where his own body has dips and angles and curves that fit against Foyle’s. Some of these seem brand new -- he’d never thought a great deal about what felt good to him; he enjoyed it when he stumbled across it, of course, but he hadn’t planned for it or sought it out. Foyle seems determined to _map_ his contours, testing every inch of Paul’s skin. Foyle’s palm is warm against his knee cap now and Paul can feel himself flushing slightly remembering the recent, tingling feel of Foyle’s fingers on the bare skin of his thigh just above his knee.

He lets out a long breath and leans back against Foyle’s shoulder. ‘He’s not a fool, Christopher.’

‘And you’re not living here. So.’

Paul blinks and looks at him. ‘Would you want me to be?’

Foyle is silent for a minute. Out of the corner of his eye, Paul can see him chewing on the corner of his lip. He pulls on the inside of his cheek for a moment and then says, ‘Yes. I would.’

Paul is silent, staring blankly at the empty armchair opposite them. He finds himself cataloging details: a bit of fluff caught on one of the casters, a loose thread on the arm. 

They haven’t talked about this before -- not really. The lodger joke has been going for about six months -- he can even be more exact about it: since Mrs. Briggs’ niece and her husband had been stranded by a snowstorm after Christmas, 1941. Mrs. Briggs’ house was full with her lodgers, the inn couldn’t extend their rooms more than a single night, so Paul had offered them accommodation, not realising they also had their three children with them. As it was, the oldest boy was going to be on a shakedown in the sitting room and it seemed as though Paul would be there, too, until Foyle had mildly offered his own spare room. It clearly made more sense for Paul rather than the Coopermans to go there since the children wouldn’t have fit into Foyle’s house any better than into Paul’s.

It was the longest period of time he and Foyle had _lived_ together. There had been a few days and nights spent in London for work when when budget restrictions had limited them to one room but he felt those didn’t properly count. They had felt more like...sneaking out of school for a day -- and had been enjoyed as much, Paul has to say.

But that snowy Christmas week had been the first time they had been together in either of their homes for longer than two days at a time. The lodger joke had started between them -- oh, Paul can’t remember quite when. Perhaps as early as New Year’s -- he remembered asking Foyle if he minded if Paul took the last slice of bread for toast and Foyle had said something about Paul not having to account for his slices of bread, he wasn’t the lodger. 

They hadn’t so much talked about it as they had joked around the edges of it ever since. Moving furniture is new but, Paul had reasoned, it’s springtime and most people get itchy for something new around then. Foyle wanting a new settee was hardly revolutionary.

Paul hasn’t kept official track but he knows he usually spends about two nights in every week with Foyle and usually either all of Saturday or Sunday. That’s been the pattern, more or less, since their first night together, a year and a half ago. As he thinks about it, though, he realises that’s not quite accurate: it’s been more like three nights, not counting Saturday nights, for the last month or two.

He frowns at the fluff caught on the chair foot and tries to think in a straight line. 

Foyle clears his throat after the silence has been steady for several minutes. ‘Did you want to cook tonight or shall--’

‘I’ll bring a few things.’ Paul hears his own voice with a slight feeling of surprise. Had he meant to say that? He sees Foyle turn to look at him and knows that this is his minute to qualify or retract -- but he doesn’t want to. The week over Christmas had been wonderful: he doesn’t quite have a word for it. The closest he can get to describing it, even to himself, is _steady_ and _unquestioned._ The feeling of the days they spent together was something he hadn’t really experienced before. Foyle’s house was large enough that they could spend most of a day without being in the same room if they wished to but it was the _knowing_ that if he wanted, he could leave his book on the arm of his chair in front of the fire, go into the upstairs front room, and find Foyle frowning at his fly-tying kit that made it feel different. And Foyle would look up at him and smile, push his glasses back so he could focus properly--

He would be out and out lying if he said he hadn’t spent the rest of the winter hoping every snowstorm forecast would turn into a blizzard.

He clears his throat. ‘I mean tomorrow night. I’ll bring some things with me.’ Paul looks up at Foyle again. ‘But I’ll need a dresser drawer.’

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta [elizajane](archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane) and for Kivrin because she had a terrible headache last week and _still_ offered to write me a ficlet because I had to go visit my parents.


End file.
